Classics of the classics The main disadvantage of Protazanov’s “Bespridannitsa” is that this too classic film is not able to add almost nothing new to the text of Ostrovsky. The plot is known from the school curriculum, and the director tries to follow the text of the play as much as possible, because the impression is like Olivier for the New Year: it seems tasty, but too traditional.
Protazanov has repeatedly turned for inspiration to the classics of Russian literature: Pushkin, Tolstoy Chekhov, Dostoevsky and to the authors who were not yet considered classics - Andreev, Apukhtin, etc. Even in pre-revolutionary times, he released a number of adaptations of Russian prose, becoming a leader of the domestic film industry, after the revolution, almost without slowing down, released several comedies that made his name famous all over the world. The release of “Bespridannitsa” fell on the period of “slowdown” of the director’s work, when he began to devote much more time to the scripts of his films, trying to find the perfect balance between the plastic expressiveness of the frame, realistic acting, sound and the author’s message.
Undoubtedly, “Bespridannitsa” is a masterful work. There is also the tragic doom of Ostrovsky’s text, in the world of which there is no place for love and human feelings in general, where a person without a “position” or a “dowry” is only a toy in the hands of pretentious, swaggering, lustful philistines, there are wings cut off by “society” and “morality” that do not allow them to rise above the fence, beyond which another unfortunate fate, which is obliged to spend its dull century, submitting to the notorious “must”. There is an inexpressible feeling of unfreedom, strangulation, limitation of the world, from the sour smell of which only the Knurovs and the drunken Robinsons can enjoy.
On stage, the author’s lyrics are always confined to the stage space, whether you like it or not, but the action will still take place in one room. Ostrovsky’s heroes, who broke out thanks to Protazanov into the big world, sang, breathed, healed wider, while maintaining an atmosphere of incredible limitation of their world. But the viewer received the Volga in all its glory, steamboats, picnics of the rich, impassable streets of a provincial city with mandatory hauronia buried in the mud, dullly pushing in the church parishioners discussing the latest gossip, “maniacism” in all its glory, as well as drab dreary songs, under which not only love, but even do not want to live.
Protazanov caught all this from Ostrovsky, caught even the languid rhythm of life in the Russian province, in which the life-loving heroine bends, and transferred it to the screen with amazing accuracy, adding to the heroine a backstory, the opportunity to exist in this nightmarish environment not 24 hours, as in the play, but years, so that the viewer more acutely felt the pain of Larissa, her desire to escape from the surrounding swamp.
Of course, Nina Alisova, a beautiful woman and a beautiful actress, helped the film, bringing even more vitality, freedom, unwillingness to submit, love to the image of Larissa. Her Larissa is a spiritualized, beautiful, full-breathing girl, eager to free herself from a tired perfume, passionately thirsty for love and understanding, greedy for life, direct and pure. She makes her way from a teenage girl who burns her hand over a candle in a sign of the truthfulness of her love to a tortured and tired young woman, only in death she sees deliverance from the shackles of a shameful world where you can not trust anyone - neither mother, nor loved one, with anyone you can not be open, honest, you can not be yourself. And how good she is in sensual scenes, how she comes to life in dance, how free she becomes, how her eyes burn! A real Russian element! “If you love, it’s crazy!”
Here in her image Protazanov allowed themselves to retreat from the play, in particular, completely abandoning the monologue of Larissa before the suicide attempt. Cinema, fortunately, gives enough artistic means that the heroine could afford not to waste her soul on empty words on the threshold of death. And his Larissa didn't want to die. She wanted to live. I just didn't know how. Therefore, she was glad when God sent her deliverance from the forced humility, which would have to be accepted like a hairdress.
The movie, of course, worked. And to get acquainted with the classics, as well as with the work of Ostrovsky, if you suddenly do not want to read, it will suit perfectly. In addition, it is a very informative film in terms of life and morals of the Russian hinterland of the late 19th century, it is a whole heap of collective images of representatives of different layers of society, it is a picturesque picture of the provincial city and the Volga in the form in which it can no longer be seen. And the film was restored in 1970, and the voiceover, in my opinion, was not the most successful, although the bulldy Robinson speaks in the voice of Vicin, but it is rather a minus because I never learned to perceive Vicin’s voice without Vicin himself.
The film was good, but I was not thrilled. I didn’t regret watching it, but I’d love to watch The Torzhka Cutter. Perhaps I was just waiting for something from this film to come from Ryazanov’s Cruel Romance – namely, an entirely original retelling of an all-too-familiar work. Protazanov just read it. With expression, beautiful, talented, sometimes skipping the text or adding a little of your own, but read.
7 out of 10